1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates a method and a system for delivering monitored or surveillanced images which are adapted to deliver image signals which have been obtained by picking up or imaging subjects to be monitored to terminals associated with the subjects to be monitored.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, there has been employed a system for carrying out the monitoring by imaging things each becoming a subject to be monitored using an image pickup apparatus. For example, in the case of a monitoring system for carrying out the image pickup using one image pickup apparatus, only the things which are present within the image pickup area of the one image pickup apparatus can be monitored, but when the things are each present outside the image pickup area thereof, such things can not be monitored at all.
Then, conventionally, there is a monitoring system wherein the area where a subject to be monitored may be present is divided into a plurality of parts so that the corresponding partial areas may be simultaneously imaged with a plurality of image pickup apparatuses, respectively, and a subject to be monitored is imaged with at least one image pickup apparatus of them, thereby allowing a subject to be monitored to be more continuously monitored. Such a system, for example, is disclosed in JP-A-2001-339708.
However, in such a monitoring system, the monitoring is carried out in such a way that all of image signals which have been obtained through the image pickup with a plurality of image pickup apparatuses are transmitted from the image pickup apparatuses to a monitoring display device to be seen and heard simultaneously, and so forth. Then, it is necessary to confirm on which image signal of the image signals from a plurality of image pickup apparatuses a subject to be monitored is imaged. For this reason, the images in which a subject to be monitored has not been imaged and which are all essentially unnecessary are transmitted in many cases, so that the transmission efficiency is degraded as compared with a case where only the images in which the subject to be monitored has been imaged are transmitted. In addition thereto, for a person as well seeing and hearing monitored images, since the number of cases where he/her must see and hear unnecessary images increases, it takes labor and time for him/she to search for the image on which a subject to be monitored is taken, and hence the efficiency of the monitoring system is excessively poor.
In the above-mentioned prior art, in the case where a monitoring display device has a limited ability to display thereon a monitored image(s), in the case where a toll required to utilize a communication network or a communication line for use in the transmission thereof, in particular, a burden for a specific toll is required, since unnecessary image signals are transmitted to be displayed, the useless labor or cost must be born.